The Occupation-Based Phase: Navigating the Transition into Practice

In this episode of the Animals and Aquatics podcast, host Gina delves into the occupation-based phase of occupational therapy (OT) practice in niche areas like animal-assisted and aquatic interventions. With a focus on practical insights and expert advice, Gina discusses the three key priorities during this phase: testing systems, establishing work-life boundaries, and creating a career pathway.

Listeners will gain valuable insights on how to navigate the unique challenges of niche OT practice, including avoiding common mistakes such as trying to do all the things, recreating past systems, and starting too big or too long. Gina shares personal anecdotes and professional tips to help OT practitioners maximize client experience, achieve work-life balance, and build a successful career pathway in their chosen niche.

Tune in to this episode for actionable strategies and inspiration to elevate your occupational therapy practice in niche areas like animal-assisted therapy, nature-based therapy, and hippotherapy. Whether you're a seasoned OT or just starting out, this podcast provides invaluable guidance for success in niche practice areas. Don't miss out on this empowering discussion!

Transcript

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Hi, this is Gina and welcome to animals and aquatics. Our goal through the animals and aquatics podcast is to provide practical insights and resources. For incorporating animal assisted and aquatic interventions into occupational therapy practice. In this last episode in the getting started series, we are focused on occupation-based phase. Like it sounds it's the phase. When you start to implement what you've worked on in the preparatory and purposeful phases. In this episode, I want to cover the three mistakes be made in this phase that slowed our growth and made us struggle more. So let's get moving. Welcome today we're going to discuss the what of the occupation-based phase when getting started in a unique practice area. Now you could probably apply this to any nontraditional area of practice, but we're specifically talking about areas of practice, like incorporating nature and natural elements, like say animals. Oh, or aquatics. If you haven't listened to the last two episodes regarding the preparatory phase and the purposeful phase, take a short break and go listen. I'll, wait. Great now that we're all on the same page. The occupation based phase. Is where you start with your first client. This is the exciting moment of truth. This will be your first run-through with a client or a few clients to make sure that you have the 360 degree client experience. That's so important. Now I really go into detail about this, my programs, but you want to make sure that you are providing a complete experience from the first contact to discharge and beyond. So when someone calls or reaches out and finds out about you and the specialty area of practice at your end, you want to make sure that right from that very moment. All the way through discharge and even beyond discharge. That you're providing a complete and comprehensive occupational therapy experience. That's really one of the things that makes working in a unique practice area. Very. Different and supportive for a lot of our clients than a traditional occupational therapy clinic based experience. We're really concerned with the whole experience that they are going to have with us. Again, from the moment that they reach out all the way through discharge and even beyond. So in our focus of the occupation-based phase, there are really three priorities that I want to focus on today. One is testing systems. The other is work-life priorities. And then creating a career pathway. So let's talk about each priority so far. Testing systems. So this means testing everything from your marketing to your clinical applications. Now if you'll think back to our previous two phases in the preparatory and the purposeful phase. You were doing your market research, you were putting together. Marketing information you were reaching out to see if there was a need in your community. But really in the occupation-based fees, short testing. All of that research, all of the things that you've put together. And you're testing to see if it resonates with people. You're testing to see if the emails are gonna go out. Like you scheduled them. If people are going to react to your messaging in the way that you thought that they were. Oftentimes what's really clear to us as occupational therapy providers. Is often not as clear to families that we would like to serve or clients that we would like to work with. I'm continually surprised when I've gone over something a few times and I think it's really clear. And then I send it out and I get feedback or people asking questions that to me seemed very obvious, but obviously to them, I had missed explaining it at a certain level. So when we're testing systems, we're really thinking about. Everything from our intake paperwork. Is there too much friction in our intake paperwork. If you're noticing that a lot of people are starting your intake paperwork, but they're not finishing it, or they're not going through your scheduling system. This is a really important time to get all those pieces working and. Often things don't work right. From the start. So we really need to test it, go back, refine it. See if there's ways that we can make it easier or more intuitive. Add more supports along the way. So that way. People can get through that intake process. Now, maybe in the evaluation phase. You have selected some occupational therapy evaluations. But then you find they don't work great for your setting and doing that occupational therapy evaluation. Isn't working out the way that you thought it would, or you're not getting the information that you really need for your setting. And that's super important. No matter what setting in we're in, whether that's nature-based being at the stables, being at the pool or any other unique setting. There's information that we need that may be specific to our setting. That's really important. If somebody is incontinent, we need to know that if we're going to be an aquatic setting, if somebody has spinal mobility issues, we need to know that before we're going to incorporate equine movement into their plan of care. If somebody has a life-threatening allergy to bee stings, we want to know that before we're out in the nature based setting. So in this occupation-based phase, we are finding out if. The evaluation process that we have set up is going to get us all the information we need from the families occupational concerns. And getting that information from families. Sometimes it's a little bit more challenging than one would expect. Some families are really excited to tell us about all of their child's strengths, which are really important with a strengths-based approach. But we also want to pinpoint the areas that we're going to work on. So making sure that we've chosen evaluations that are going to highlight the areas that we're going to focus on. Making sure that we have the data that we need to write goals at the end of our evaluation. We get to work through those systems. And then we have like billing our billing systems. Our first. Several iterations of clients. We weren't using an EMR financially, it didn't make sense to have an EMR for only a few clients. But the billing systems were very clunky. And quite time consuming to go through invoices, create super bills. Actually bill for services. Collect payment. And. As those systems improved our time management improved our ability to collect on those invoices improved. That workflow process is, is like a thousand times better. Now. And so in this getting started occupation-based phase, right. You're going to be going through. All of your systems, you're going to find out what works really well. What's not working so well. What are the things that you thought would work really well? And what areas do you really need to tweak? Now, this can also apply to your clinical applications. You may have an idea that you want to run hour long sessions. And. You may start your hour long sessions and find out that your clients are fatiguing too quickly. And an hour is really just too much time for whatever setting that you're in. So it testing systems, we can really find out. How we'll make changes as we go forward. In our unique practice area, what do we need to change in the technology side of things? What do we need to change in touchpoints that we're having with our clients and families? What do we need to change in our clinical applications with our hands-on work that we're doing? Maybe where do we need to change some of our training and support to our teams? And I do have a previous podcast episode on the hippotherapy, team. But whether you're at the pool and you have a pool deck hand. That's going to help you with things, whether you have a horse leader. At incorporating hippotherapy, whether you have someone in a farm-based setting who is handling your therapy, goats for you. Right. You have certain team procedures that you're going to need to do training on. And so maybe as you start to test out these systems, you realize that your interns don't understand the whole process or volunteers aren't showing up at the proper time, or you haven't communicated to your administration. Exactly what you need as far as support. So in your testing systems phase, You get to go through each of these, like a check box and say it's working, it needs refinement or scrap it and start over. The second priority. That I think is really important is work-life and I hate the term work-life balance. So in this phase, I really like to say it's important to set work-life boundaries. Desire, your poor priorities are in your career and home life right now. As you're getting started in this occupation-based phase. So when you really start stepping in and seeing your first client or first couple of clients, this is when it's important to start putting boundaries in. To decide how you want to handle. Client text messaging or client inquiries or rescheduling. And you can think about what roles are really most important to you. So if you're a new grad without any other family responsibilities, you might want to go all in with your new work roles. But if you're a new mom, who's creating this OT career around your desire to be home with your kids, then you may need to prioritize that function first. And now is the time to do it. Not later when your niche practice has grown. So when you're thinking about. This priority. You're really setting up some guard rails. Around your time. Around the way that you want to interact with clients and families, how this new niche area of practice or this program within your current job is going to function within your other roles and responsibilities that you have. So you want to think about this as your business is not a baby. Okay. It's not your baby. You may have grown it and cuddled it and brought it to life in this occupation-based phase, but it's not a baby. It really should be a system that can be self-sustaining at some point in the near future. Okay. So that's an important mindset shift to have here when we're talking about work life priorities. Now the last priority in the occupation-based phase is creating a career pathway. And in this phase, you're going to decide how far down this path do you want to go? And then what stepping stones will you need to get there? Some journeys are only going to need a few stones and those can be found for free and podcasts like this one or published research. Other journeys like mine with a goal to teach hippotherapy, around the world. Took many, many stepping stones and many people holding my hands along the way. Thanks, Bonnie Laurie and Claudia. So, who are you going to choose to hold your hand along the way? In this phase, it's important to start to look around and see what direction you want to go in. Are you going all in for the highest level of certification in your particular niche area? Are you going to get. All of the training that is offered in nature-based therapy or in aquatics. Are you just going to keep this to one night a week where you're going to do some continuing education. You're going to keep up with some podcast and this area is going to support your community. And it's going to give you a breath of fresh air in your occupational therapy journey. And that's really enough and that's okay too. Right. Different people's journeys are going to take them in different directions. And it's awesome to be able to say. This is really what I want. And this is what I've planned. This is the pathway that I've planned. And I love doing it one night a week and that's fantastic. It brings me so much joy and I love seeing the benefits that my clients get. In other cases, you may have a much bigger vision in that you want to do this full time. You want to become recognized as an expert or a leader in your area, and that's going to take you down a very different pathway. When you start to see what direction that you want to go in. Then you can look at what resources you're going to need. Okay. So these details then get added to your business budget. If it's your own business or a specialty area of practice in someone else's business. Then they need to know the budget for continuing education. So a see at conference this year, And they'll need to know what support you're going to need along the way. So for this phase, you're really going to take stock of these three priority areas. You might want to know also what mistakes that I made so you can avoid them. So I would say the three biggest mistakes to avoid are trying to do all the things. Recreating the systems of your last job. And starting to big or long. So let me dive into each of those separately. So the first one is trying to do all the things and. It's so exciting to be able to have an idea and come and bring it to life. It really is. And. When you suddenly have that freedom to. Start creating a program or incorporating a new treatment tool like hippotherapy, into your practice. Often you may want to do all the things or try all the things. So you might want to be working. With children with autism at the stable, and you might want to be doing a social skills group. And if you're trying to do all the things at once. You're not really putting any oh, or all of your attention. In any one area. And when you're starting in a niche practice area. You need to have a certain level of discipline and focus. To master those systems priorities, right. That I was talking about in that area. And so when you're trying to do all the things, and so maybe that's running some nature based groups and starting up. Some therapy one-on-one sessions, incorporating farm animals and doing some crafting groups. You're trying to do all the things and. There's a saying, right? If you're trying to catch two rabbits, right? You end up catching none. If we can just focus on catching one rabbit at a time. Then you can build. What your offerings are in your occupational therapy practice. So. Slow down. Find the one thing. Through your preparatory and purposeful phase that has the biggest chance of succeeding and being successful, the area that you're most passionate in, or have the best skill set for. The area that maybe you already have resources available to you. And focus on that first. Make that successful first, make sure all the systems run, all the emails are scheduled. The billing works. Everything right. The marketing, the messaging. You want to know that that all is going to work, then you can expand as time goes on. You're not putting yourself into a box by mastering one area first. And that applies to both like your support. So your continuing education or certifications. As well as the business or administrative side of things. So. That's the biggest, like one of the biggest mistakes that lots of people make right. Is trying to do all the things. The next biggest mistake is recreating the systems of your last job. So often we stick with things that are familiar and it's much easier to go with something that's familiar to you. So if you've worked in early intervention, maybe you're thinking about one hour sessions that are partially home-based and partially at one of your, like at your unique setting. So maybe you're seeing them at the pool, but you're also going to see them at home once a week. And you're doing parent communication notes at the end, and you're giving those to the parent. And so you're really recreating some of that EI model. In this unique practice area you're trying to incorporate. Whatever systems that you had at your last job. And often. It doesn't work. Okay. So the systems that were created for early intervention work really well for early intervention, the coaching model home-based right. That works really well for in early intervention is really important. School-based systems work really well for school-based so doing and end of the year summary, and completing documentation. Based on, groups or push in that you're having. That works really well in a school-based setting. But when we're working in a unique practice area, We really need to think about. How do we retain our clinical integrity? While being true to the setting that we're in. So that may mean changing the session length of times frequency or duration. It may mean getting really clear on writing soap notes so that we're writing them in a clinical format and we're not writing them for the stable or we're not writing session summary that's based on the pool, we're writing an occupational therapy soap note. That is based on our OT goals. So we want to think about. What systems are we most comfortable and most familiar with and making sure that we're not just falling into those same patterns. As we begin working in a unique practice area. And I see this challenge a lot with people who are adding a specialty area to their existing job. So maybe they're going to be running a nature-based group one afternoon a week within their clinical job that they're already doing. So they're going to take. A lot of those same frameworks. And try to move it into that nature-based setting. And a lot of times those systems are in the clinical model for a reason. And as we move out into a nature-based practice, we really need to incorporate new systems, new frames of reference. And new ways of. Communicating with families incorporating the information that they're going to need to know. When they're meeting with us for occupational therapy in a new setting. And the last biggest mistake that I want to share today with you is starting too big. Or long. And for me, it was the issue of starting too long. So making a commitment to do something that was too long. And I didn't have the opportunity to then go ahead and make changes when things weren't working well for me so the first commitment that I made was 12 weeks long and it was a nature based program. And. It was a really long 12 weeks. And so now I have cut that in half when I'm trying a new program. A new experience, six weeks, six weeks. I can pretty much do anything for six weeks. 12 weeks was a really long time. And so thinking about for your first iteration. Keeping it short. And so. Summer. Very naturally lends itself to a short duration. And for those of you who are hoping to try Integrating a new niche into your occupational therapy practice this summer, I would love to touch base with you because summer is like the perfect amount of time to. Try a new treatment tool and it's sort of book-ended right. It's bookended by the school year it's bookended by spring and fall. It's bookended by the change of the seasons. But it doesn't allow it to be too long. Because you're going to need to tweak those systems. Right. And so. Starting too long. Definitely a challenge. Don't do it. Just please. Don't do it. Starting too big also would go along that route. So if you're a aquatic occupational therapy books up and you have 10 clients in a row and you haven't ever done it. You're going to regret it. Like, don't do it. Same if you are incorporating hippotherapy, into your occupational therapy sessions, don't book 10 back to back client don't book 10 clients in a day, even if they're all spread out. It's, it's a good way to ruin yourself. And so it's a good way to get burnout. So starting too big, starting too long, start small. 1, 2, 3 clients. Three's a great number. That way, if somebody is absent, you still have to, three is a great number and not too long. Six, six is a good six is good for me. Maybe eight might work for you. Six is good for me. So the three biggest mistakes trying to do all the things, recreating the systems of your last job. Starting too big or too long. Don't do them learn from the struggle that I had. You don't have to go through that. So to wrap up today's episode, the occupation based phase. Is where you start living your dream, working in a unique niche. It might be for a few hours a week, and that supports your enthusiasm for OT, or it might be part of a larger vision to transition to a full-time practice in a unique area of practice. Either way you want to master the three key priorities and avoid the top three mistakes to see success without the struggle. Until next time on animals and aquatics, keep it warm and snugly.